If consultants were so smart, how come they don’t run businesses?

Really, if management consultants knew all the answers to all our problems, then:
a: shouldn’t’ t they be managing instead of consulting to businesses?
b: wouldn’t they be best value investors as compared to Warren Buffet and the likes?

I mean, if I was running an organization that was underperforming, wouldn’t I be better off engaging some smart management consultants to manage the business and pay them based on success instead of paying them fees to tell us what to do? After all what we want are the results!

Well it doesn’t work that way. Consultants have figured out that the best way to make money, like in fashion and beauty, is to sell hope.

In all of the experience I have had with consultants, having been a consultant and reading the books by consultants, I have come to the conclusion that consultants thrive on perfect hindsight to sell you hope. They look at something that has become successful, reverse engineer it, then sell it to other businesses as an elixir and the way to go.

If consultants could truly predict the future, they would not be in the consulting business!

The people who create the future are the entrepreneurs who take huge personal risks at their own expense to chase a dream and an idea. And when it works, innovation comes to light. And when it fails, like most do, you never hear about it.

I really wonder if Starbucks went into business as a result of a consultant seeing the opportunity and then pitching it to the Starbucks people, and all the Starbuck’s people had to do was to follow the plan. Most unlikely… but do correct me if I am wrong.

Consultants are best at telling you what others have done. They can’t really tell how it was done or what was the thinking behind it but they can give good analysis of the before and current state. Many breakthrough thoughts happen in the deep recesses of our brains, that we rarely are able to explain why we made a choice or particular decision. When the decision or choice is made, and it becomes conscious, then we try to put rationality to it. But that rationality is not reality.

So if you are running a business, and you have a problem, whatever it maybe, I will suggest to you that you are far better of getting well facilitated dialogue and team processes going within your leadership team, and you more likely, in a shorter time and less cost, get you a solution that will have far superior traction into the organization, producing real results.

By the way, the historical origin of the name management consultant was “consultant to management” which was coined by Peter Drucker (I think). And that what Peter Drucker did as consultant to management is he helped his clients look at their problems, facilitate session about the problems and find solutions that were within reach and capability of the organization to implement and realize a results.